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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.